The present invention relates to a method of recording and reproducing both audio and character signals, such as for characters and numerals on an audio magnetic tape or disk. The invention also relates to a recording medium with both audio and character signals recorded thereon, and furthermore relates to a method of moving character images on the display screen wherein lines of characters are moved slowly so that an oldest line of characters are scrolled off and a new line of characters are displayed when the display screen, such as a CRT display or the like, has overflowed with characters.
Recently, it has become increasingly popular to sing with karaoke or learn English comversation at home using audio magnetic tapes and disks. (Note: Karaoke is a tape recorded accompaniment for amature singers.) However, in singing with karaoke, it is necessary to prepare text cards in which words are written, and therefore it is troublesome to store such text cards and at the same time it is difficult to read a card in a dark place such as for example a snack bar and the like. In using for learning English comversation etc., it is troublesome to open the text book and read the sentence while listening to the played audio tape or disk, making it difficult to accustom a person to the learning.
Moreover, in serial transmission of digital data representing the visual information, commands for starting display, line feeding and clearing RAM are coded in digital, causing the command decoding circuit to become complex and expensive, and eventually this method is not to be used for karaoke equipment and language learning equipment. If it is merely requested to display simple images such as characters on the CRT screen, imperfect images on the screen and line feed caused by a dropout of data during transmission will not pose a serious problem practically.
Besides, in the conventional display system such as a word processor, characters are displayed sequentially on the CRT screen, and when the screen overflows with characters, the first line of characters are removed from the screen and the next line of characters are displayed additionally. In this case, when a character line is replaced with new one all character lines move instantaneously, causing the reader to lose reading position.